This invention relates to a method for making data available online, and, in particular, to making proprietary data available online on a customer-specific basis.
There are many situations where a business would like to have available in a single place concise, systematic data relating to some aspect of its business. While the business could build its own database, doing so is time-consuming and expensive. Thus, a business opportunity exists in providing such a database for others. However, the only way it would be feasible to do this would be for the database to include data for a large number of customers. The difficulty is that each customer's data may be proprietary to that customer and the customer would not want other customers to be able to access it.
The subject invention overcomes this difficulty by providing an online database containing customer-specific data relating to a plurality of customers. The database is formatted to allow a customer to access a selected group of data which is relevant to that customer by utilizing a unique identifier.
The foregoing and other objectives, features, and advantages of the invention will be more readily understood upon consideration of the following detailed description of the invention, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.